Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Most people would believe that the rational thing is the
right thing, but it is also true that one person’s rational decision is another
person’s error. It might be rational to do one thing in one’s own
self-interest, but it might be rational to do another thing because it is best
for one’s family. Surely, altruistic actions can also be rational.

And, of course, who is to decide what is or is not rational,
and for whom? Doing the right thing might feel automatic, as though rational reflection has not entered the
decisions making process.

After all, there are good habits and bad habits. All of them are
often performed as though without reflection. They might promote your best
interest, but you need not be doing them because you made a rational decision. For
all we know people develop good habits because they are brought up that way,
because their parents encourage them or because they don't know any better.

Recently, behavioral economists have addressed the problem
of human decision-making. They have tried to answer this question: Are human
beings fundamentally rational animals who make decisions based on their
self-interest, or are they buffeted hither and yon, making irrational, and
presumably wrong decisions, for reasons that have nothing to do with their
self-interest?

Behavioral
economics, which has gained ground among academic economists over the past
several decades, departs from traditional notions by assuming that individuals
don't always behave rationally and act in their own best interests. Thus we
have market bubbles in which investors inflate stocks or homes way above their
rational value.

Of course, we can ask what the rational value is, and who
decides it. If the rational value involves a stock’s future earnings, we should
recognize that predicting the future is a notoriously difficult task. We may
understand the probabilities and the probabilities may point in one direction,
but what if instinct says otherwise? And what if Warren Buffet’s instinct leads
him to a different conclusion?

Market bubbles are much easier to identify retrospectively.
If there were a human being who could predict the future with perfect or even
near-perfect accuracy, he would not be teaching in a university.

People who invest at the top of market bubbles are following
what has been called the madness of crowds. But, is it rational or irrational
to participate in an activity that has netted many people vast sums of money? After
all, some people exit a bubble market before the collapse; some don’t.

And let us not imagine that scientists have a monopoly on
good investment advice. No less than Isaac Newton was ruined by investing in
the South Seas Company in the early eighteenth century.

In the past, before behavioral economics, at a time when we
left ethical issues to the non-scientists, people would have said that those
who get caught in a market bubble have been done in by their greed. They would
have committed one of the seven deadly sins, the sin of avarice.

But then, the man who was so avaricious that he kept his
money hidden in a vault, thus, who refused to chase a market bubble might also
be considered as having committed a deadly sin.

In ethics, the difference between wise investment decisions
and greed is one of degree, not of kind. The same is true of most of the deadly
sins.

To take another problem: procrastination. How do you know
when you are procrastinating and when you are working on making a judicious
decision? Some situations require quick, decisive actions. Others demand more
sober reflection. How do you know which is which?

Keep in mind, one person’s snap decision might be spot on
while another’s might be folly. The difference, of course, lies in experience.

Behavioral economists have approached these problems by
looking at the inner workings of the
human brain. They want to be able to observe what the brain does when
decision-making takes place.

Chen summarizes:

Psychologist
Dr. Kahneman, who won a Nobel Prize in economics for research into
decision-making in 2002, says it is very difficult to overcome our split-second
irrational reactions. "Much of it is automatic," he says.
"Preferences come to mind and emotions arise, and we're not aware that
we're making [decisions and assumptions] and therefore cannot control
them."

Of course, it is not at all self-evident that the mind (really, the brain) under
observation functions as it does when it is not being observed... by being hooked up to electrodes of being subjected to a PET scan?

Thinking that feels automatic is not necessarily irrational.
An experienced baseball player will know much quicker than you or I whether the
pitch that is coming at him is a fastball or a slider. He will be using
intuitive and instinctive knowledge, knowledge that he has gained from
experience. He can surely be tricked, but less often than you or I.

When it comes to moral responsibility, the inner process is
far less important than the outward behavior. You are known for what you do, not
for what you were or were not thinking before you did it. As I was arguing
yesterday, the concept of free will means that you are responsible for your
actions, regardless of your motives or of the temptations you faced.

John Horgan made the same point recently on the Scientific
American blog:

The
concept of free will underpins all our ethics and morality; it forces us to
take responsibility for ourselves rather than consigning our fate to our genes
or a divine plan.

Whatever our reservations about behavioral economics and its
forays into decision-making and ethics, it is important to note that, until
recently, the conventional wisdom, foisted on us by the therapy culture, did
not concern itself with how people go about making good decisions or with how
they make and implement plans.

Similarly, where the therapy culture, thanks to Dr. Freud,
taught people to look back into their past, the new techniques of decision
making involve projecting oneself into the future.

Therapists have been more obsessed with telling people to
figure out how they really feel than what is the right thing to do. If they
offer advice, then tend to follow mindless mantras, like: follow your
bliss.

You don’t think that those who invest in bubble markets are
not following their bliss?

Surely, it is better to manage your emotions and to think
through your decisions, even to follow
through on them, than to follow your instinct when it is leading you over the
cliff.

And yet, when you are involved in a conversation, for
example, you do not think through everything you say before you say it. A good
conversation does not feel that it is being directed by an inner genie. It
feels like it has a life of its own.

There is, as the scientists have pointed out and as I have
argued often on this blog, nothing wrong with talking about feelings. Emotion
is information in a different form.

People run into trouble when they start believing that their emotions
are key to understanding a situation. Behavioral economists are correct when they tell people to step back from their feelings, to consider them objectively as though
they were someone else’s. Then again, this does not feel like an original thought.

How do you learn how to do it? Perhaps the behavioral
economists have invented some new mental exercises, but the old way, taking advice from someone
who is wiser and more experienced, has a pretty good track record, too.

Monday, December 30, 2013

Do you believe in fate? Do you believe that outside (or inside) forces determine
the course of your life? Do you believe that supernatural powers direct your
actions and behaviors? Do you believe that your destiny is written in stone and
that it will play itself out, regardless of what you do?

Few will admit it but many people believe in fate. It seems
like an innocent enough belief, like believing in Santa Claus.

But, ask yourself this: how does your belief in fate influence
the way you conduct your life.

Researchers in Australia studied the question in relation to
people who were in serious need of weight reduction.All of the participants knew that the only way to lose weight, and
to save their lives, was to change their personal habits. They needed, as
everyone knows, to exercise more and to eat less.

The study wanted to find out why some people are perfectly capable of changing their conduct while others resist change. Why can some people become motivated to lose weight while others seem resigned to their obesity?

The study discovered that subjects who believed in fate
were less likely to undertake the necessary behavior changes. Fatalistic to a fault, they were less
likely to believe that they could change. Why try to make
significant changes in the way you conduct your life when you believe that
it will not make any difference anyway?

Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark led the study. She emphasized
that the difference between the two groups had nothing to do with whether or
not they were well-informed about the dangers of obesity and about what they needed
to do to help themselves.

In her words:

The
main policy response to the obesity epidemic has been the provision of better
information, but information alone is insufficient to change people’s eating
habits.

More and better information did not influence people who
believed in fate. Their belief system, their ideology made overrode their knowledge
of what needed to be done and stifled their will to change.

By their lights it was futile to change because they knew
that they could not fight destiny.

People who believe in fate or destiny, or who hold to
doctrines of predestination, tend to disparage the concept of free will. Those
who believe in free will accept that their choices and decisions can alter the
direction of their lives, so they are far more likely to work on changing the
way they conduct themselves.

Some reject free will on religious grounds. Some reject it
because they believe that science can disprove it. In either case
they will be leaving the course of their lives in the hands of powers they
cannot control, cannot even hope to control: God’s will or brain chemistry.

As you know, the argument about free will and predestination
goes back at least to the time of Augustine of Hippo. Since free will itself
dates to the story of Adam and Eve, it is fair to consider it the moral
cornerstone of Judeo-Christianity, thus of Western Civilization.

If free will is a metaphysical concept, it cannot be proved
or disproved by empirical research. Even if we imagine that brain scans can
highlight the temptations that influence our decision, this does not-- and did
not, even in the time of Adam and Eve-- eliminate anyone’s free will or
responsibility.

Many psychologists further undermine free will by insisting that your life is an
unfolding narrative. They tell us that it’s all about the story—as though
stories were scientific facts.

If life is a story we are all condemned to play out roles in
a script. If that is true—and even if it is not—believing it will drain your
initiative about changing the course or outcome of the narrative.

Strangely, sophisticate modern scientists are promoting an
idea that very closely resembles Freud’s. Keep in mind, Freud believed
that free will was an illusion. He had to. If we have free will we are not be
condemned to live out our lives according to this or that Greek tragedy… the
story of Oedipus or the story of Narcissus.

The alternative to the life-is-a-narrative theory is the
idea that life is like a game. Modern proponents of this idea include Ludwig
Wittgenstein and Gilbert Ryle.

True enough, games like football, baseball, chess and
solitaire have rules, but the course of any game and its outcome are not
predetermined. If your play can influence the outcome of a game decisively, you
have every incentive to improve. If you are losing more than winning,
you will not believe that fate has it in for you, but that you should work
harder.

If life is a game you will not only be more likely to follow
a healthy diet but you will be less likely to turn to the astrology charts to
find out what fate has in store for you today.

Since PET scans and brain chemistry cannot tell us whether
or not we have free will, we do better to ask, as the Australian researchers
did, what consequences befall those who believe in free will and what
consequences befall those who believe in fate.

Apparently, it is a better bet to believe in free will than
to believe in fate. It's healthier, to boot.

Sunday, December 29, 2013

I don’t know how I missed it, but Cloe Madanes’s article
about the art of misery is an instant classic.

The article is long, detailed and positively brilliant. I cannot summarize it
adequately, but Madanes begins with the idea that some people might actually
want to make themselves miserable. Or better, that some people have cultivated
and mastered habits that are guaranteed to produce misery.

For my part, I cannot help but see that these habits
coincide perfectly with Freudian psychoanalysis, at least, with the French and
Argentinian versions of same.

We assume, Madanes says, that everyone is seeking happiness
or at the least some form of contentment. But then, she continues, we discover
that some people seem to be hard at work at making themselves miserable.
Perhaps they do not think of it this way.

They might be so unconscious that they do not even know that
they are following a set of rules. Nevertheless, their behavior is so perfectly
comprised by Madanes’s rules, that the conclusion is inescapable.

Madanes writes:

After
perusing the output of some of the finest brains in the therapy profession,
I’ve come to the conclusion that misery is an art form, and the satisfaction
people seem to find in it reflects the creative effort required to cultivate
it. In other words, when your living conditions are stable, peaceful, and
prosperous—no civil wars raging in your streets, no mass hunger, no epidemic
disease, no vexation from poverty—making yourself miserable is a craft all its
own, requiring imagination, vision, and ingenuity. It can even give life a
distinctive meaning.

If everyone is pursing happiness and you are pursuing
misery, you become distinctly and uniquely individual. You become one of a
kind. You might be attracting the wrong kind of attention but you will be
attracting attention.

Some people will hold you up as an example of what not to
do, but they will be talking about you. They will be interested. They will be
concerned. They might even want to help. Unless they become so fed up that they
tune out.

Madanes excludes the more obvious ways of making yourself
miserable: like drugs and crime. She is too sensitive to say it, but people who
use drugs and who commit crimes are not working to make themselves miserable:
they are seeking a semi-permanent state of bliss.

To perfect the art of misery you need to make it appear that
you are not seeking it:

Subtler
strategies, ones that won’t lead anyone to suspect that you’re acting
deliberately, can be highly effective. But you need to pretend that you want to
be happy, like everybody else, or people won’t take your misery seriously. The
real art is to behave in ways that’ll bring on misery while allowing you to
claim that you’re an innocent victim, ideally of the very people from whom
you’re forcibly extracting compassion and pity.

Naturally, you will be sharing the pain. Misery loves
company, so it begins by alienating those near and dear to you.

Madanes writes:

It’s
inevitable that as you make yourself miserable, you’ll be making those around
you miserable also, at least until they leave you—which will give you another
reason to feel miserable. So it’s important to keep in mind the benefits you’re
accruing in your misery.

She lists some of the advantages that accrue to those who
make themselves miserable.

First, everyone around you will feel sorry for you. Better
yet, some people might feel guilty about your condition, as though they were
responsible. If they do, you will have helped make someone else miserable.

Second, if you never expect that anything good will happen
to you, you will never be disappointed. A fair point, we all agree.

Third, and perhaps most importantly in some circles— I know
them well— misery will make you feel morally and intellectually superior to those
who are happy.

Madanes describes this character type accurately:

Being
miserable can give the impression that you’re a wise and worldly person,
especially if you’re miserable not just about your life, but about society in
general. You can project an aura of someone burdened by a form of profound,
tragic, existential knowledge that happy, shallow people can’t possibly
appreciate.

I cannot, in the short space of a blog post, summarize all the
habits that Madanes suggests, but here are a few.

Surely, fear of loss, especially fear of financial loss must
top the list. If you are contented with what you have, you might feel good
about yourself. So, go out and focus on what you can lose.

Or, as Janis Joplin once sang: “Freedom’s just another word
for nothing left to lose.”

It helps if you can perfect the art of wasting time, of
feeling useless. Television and some social media are at the ready to help you
out here. The less you accomplish the more miserable you will feel.

And then, give yourself a negative identity. Madanes explains
how you can cultivate this habit:

If
you feel depressed, become a Depressed Person; if you suffer from social
anxiety or a phobia, assume the identity of a Phobic Person or a Person with
Anxiety Disorder. Make your condition the focus of your life. Talk about it to
everybody, and make sure to read up on the symptoms so you can speak about them
knowledgeably and endlessly. Practice the behaviors most associated with that
condition, particularly when it’ll interfere with regular activities and
relationships. Focus on how depressed you are and become weepy, if that’s your
identity of choice. Refuse to go places or try new things because they make you
too anxious. Work yourself into panic attacks in places it’ll cause the most
commotion. It’s important to show that you don’t enjoy these states or
behaviors, but that there’s nothing you can do to prevent them.

To advance your cause, you should learn how to mistreat
other people. The more people you can alienate the more you will feel rejected.

So, you want to take every opportunity to fight and bicker.
You want to criticize people mercilessly for their faults, real and imagined.
And you must also think the worst of everyone by impugning their motives. And
you want to perfect the art of whining and complaining. It also helps to be late for appointments, to fail to return messages and to be rude to those you come into contact with.

If you succeed, you can feel that you have good reason to be an ingrate
and to care only about yourself.

If you should be involved in a romantic relationship, do not
be satisfied with your lover as he or she is. Set out to change him or her.

Naturally, it helps to blame other people for everything
that has ever gone wrong. Start by blaming your parents; surely, you had a miserably upbringing. Now, that makes you
feel worse already.

It is also good to withdraw into your mind and introspect:

Spend a
great deal of time focused on yourself. Worry constantly about the causes of
your behavior, analyze your defects, and chew on your problems. This will help
you foster a pessimistic view of your life. Don’t allow yourself to become
distracted by any positive experience or influence. The point is to ensure that
even minor upsets and difficulties appear huge and portentous.

When you introspect, you must focus on the past. You can tell yourself that your past has been filled with insurmountable and
crippling traumas. Or else, you can believe that it was so wonderful
that you will never see its like. Either way, obsessing about the past is a
good way to make yourself miserable.

If this list does not remind you of Freudian psychoanalysis,
you have, as Lacan used to say, completely misread Freud.

Friday, December 27, 2013

The few media outlets that are covering Turkey are
focusing on the corruption scandals and the political theatrics. As noted yesterday, they deserve credit for reporting on the failed American policy in Turkey.

But, that’s not even the most important thing that’s
happening in turkey. David Goldman, aka Spengler is altering us to the fact
that the country is in the midst of an economic collapse.

Goldman has been predicting this outcome for some time now
and he deserves credit for an excellent call. For the record he was well ahead
of everyone else in his analysis of the situation in Egypt, too.

In a column today Goldman explains that Turkey is in the
midst of a political and economic implosion:

Turkey
is coming apart. The Islamist coalition that crushed the secular military and
political establishment–between Tayip Erdogan’s ruling AK Party and the
Islamist movement around Fethullah Gulen–has cracked. The Gulenists, who predominate
in the security forces, have arrested the sons of top government ministers for
helping Iran to launder money and circumvent sanctions, and ten members of
Erdogan’s cabinet have resigned. Turkey’s currency is in free fall, and that’s
just the beginning of the country’s troubles: about two-fifths of corporate
debt is in foreign currencies, so the cost of servicing it jumps whenever the
Turkish lira declines. Turkish stocks have crashed (and were down another 5% in
dollar terms in early trading Friday). So much for Turkey’s miracle economy.

Why does this matter? The Obama administration, and also the
Bush administration, pinned their hopes on Erdogan. They believed that he would serve as the example of an Islamist leader who could direct an advanced
economy.

For some time it looked as though Erdogan’s Turkey was a great
economic success. Unfortunately, Goldman analyzes, the Turkish economic miracle
was smoke and mirrors:

Erdogan’s
much-vaunted economic miracle stemmed mainly from vast credit expansion to fuel
an import boom, leaving the country with a current account deficit of 7 % of
GDP (about the same as Greece before it went bankrupt) and a mushrooming pile
of short-term foreign debt. The Gulf States kept financing Erdogan’s import
bill, evidently because they wanted to keep a Sunni power in business as a
counterweight to Iran; perhaps they have tired of Turkey’s double-dealing with
the Persians. And credulous investors kept piling into Turkish stocks.

Why was it inevitable that Turkey implode?

In Goldman’s words:

Turkey
is a mediocre economy at best with a poorly-educated workforce, no high tech
capacity, and shrinking markets in depressed Europe and the unstable Arab
world. Its future might well be as an economic tributary of China, as the “New
Silk Road” extends high-speed rail lines to the Bosporus.

For the
past ten years we have heard ad nauseum about the “Turkish model” of “Muslim
democracy.” The George W. Bush administration courted Erdogan even before he
became prime minister, and Obama went out of his way to make Erdogan his
principal pal in foreign policy. I have been ridiculing this notion for years,
for example in this 2010
essay for Tablet.

The
whole notion was flawed from top to bottom. Turkey was not in line to become an
economic power of any kind: it lacked the people and skills to do anything
better than medium-tech manufacturing. Its Islamists never were democrats.

If Turkey cannot serve as a role model for the floundering states in the Middle East, what nation can?

You guessed it: Israel.

One understands why political leaders staked so much hope on
the Turkish miracle. They knew that most of the region’s Muslims would rather
die than emulate the Jewish state.

Thus, Goldman sees little cause for optimism:

Now the
hashish smoke has cleared, Erdogan’s Cave of Wonders has turned back into a
sandpit, and the foreign policy establishment has nothing to show for years of
propitiation of this Anatolian wannabe except a headache.

Now
that Turkey is coming unstuck, along with Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, and
Iraq, we should conclude that the entire project of bringing stability to the
Muslim world was a hookah-dream to begin with. Except for the State of Israel
and a couple of Sunni monarchies that survive by dint of their oil wealth, we
are witnessing the unraveling of the Middle East. The best we can do is to
insulate ourselves from the spillover effect.

Obamacare has been a boon for Republicans. It’s been the
ultimate Christmas present, beyond Republicans’ fondest wishes.

President Obama’s signature program may not be bringing
affordable health insurance to the middle class but it has cured what
was ailing the Republican Party.

Two months ago, following the government shutdown and
Republican histrionics, Democrats led Republicans 50-42 in the generic
congressional ballot.

Today, according to CNN/ORC, the Republicans have a 49-44
advantage over Democrats.

Obviously, these polls only show a trend, but the change is
radical.

Now, Republicans need to find a way not to self-destruct with primary races. They need to nominate candidates that the electorate can take
seriously and to formulate a positive agenda, something like the Contract with America.

The
American Studies Association’s endorsement
this month of a boycott of Israeli academic institutions continues to
stir passions, with four colleges and universities announcing their withdrawal
from the association, a second leading higher-education association denouncing
the boycott and a rising tide of college presidents speaking out against it.

One
after the other, prominent university presidents and academic leaders have
issued condemnations over the last week that emphasize the importance of
academic freedom.

“Academic
boycotts subvert the academic freedoms and values necessary to the free flow of
ideas, which is the lifeblood of the worldwide community of scholars,” said Drew
Gilpin Faust, the president of Harvard.

The
executive committee of the American Association of Universities, an
organization of the most prestigious research institutions, joined the American
Association of University Professors in opposing the boycott. It said the
boycott would violate the academic freedom “not only of Israeli
scholars but also of American scholars who might be pressured to comply with
it.”

We conclude that the American Studies Association
overreached. There are limits beyond which even liberal academics are unwilling
to go.

When it comes to American universities, one needs to be
thankful for the small things… because that is all we are going to get.

Thursday, December 26, 2013

If you think that you have it bad, if you think that America’s
national mood is foul and fetid, look across the ocean to France.

Perhaps it’s not an accident that the word malaise is
French. If you suspect that the French are really good at malaise you are
right.

After all, a nation that still clings to psychoanalysis and
that manages to consume more psychiatric medication per capita than anyone else
is not likely to be in a very good mood.

The French Interior Ministry recently analyzed the French
malaise:

A
climate of pain and a feeling of despondency reign, which block any
self-projection into a better future. It's the compost in which a possible
social explosion is fermenting. Attention is called to the difficulty elected
officials are having in creating a sense of proportion and inspiring
confidence. This climate of pessimism and defiance is feeding extremist
arguments about the impotence of the authorities.

Writing in the Wall Street Journal John Vinocur says that
the French are suffering from a “self-inflicted grief.” What could that mean
except that they are suffering the consequences of their votes? Or perhaps the
French are discovering that socialist policies undermine initiative and deprive
people of the chance to earn success.

All the world’s love and debauchery will not overcome the
torpor inflicted by a socialist government.

With unemployment hovering at 11% French men and women are
despondent about their socialist president, Francois Hollande, the man that
they all voted for:

Vinocur explains:

Seventy-four
percent of the French think France is on the decline and 83% think that
President François Hollande's blurry reform policies are
"ineffectual," according to reputable polling organizations. Mario
Draghi, president of the European Central Bank, says "French
competitiveness remains insufficient and strengthening public finances can no
longer rely on tax increases."

You might imagine that the French psychoanalytic
establishment knows what it takes to improve everyone’s mental health. And yet,
French analysts supported Hollande’s candidacy to a man and to a woman. Some
prominent French analysts were happy to tell the world how much they detested former
president Nicolas Sarkozy.

Of course, anyone who still believes that psychoanalysis
shows the way to mental health needs to grow out of that illusion. It's probably not an accident that the French have lost the ability to project themselves into the future. After all, Freudian psychoanalysis teaches you primarily to focus on the past.

I do not emphasize French psychoanalysis because I know
it so well. The French press did not need me to ask whether President Hollande can
be cured by a few thousand hours on the couch.

I have no information about President Hollande’s experience
with mental health professionals, but I would venture that he has spent some
time consulting with psychoanalysts. In his world everyone does it. Why shouldn’t
he?

Vinocur described the way the story is being told by French
newsmagazines:

This
plays into newsmagazine covers like one that portrayed Sigmund Freud staring at
President Hollande across the page with a headline reading: "Hollande, as
Shrinks See Him—Can He Change?"; or another with a picture of a
troubled-looking Mr. Hollande and the accompanying line, "At the Edge of
Chaos: From A to Z, the Inventory of His Failures."

Of course, they have gotten the story wrong. Voting for a
psychoanalyst’s favorite candidate will do nothing to improve anyone’s mental
health. Haven’t the French figured out that psychoanalysis neither treats nor
cures?

In France psychoanalysis is not the solution; it's the problem.

What has psychoanalysis done for France? It has infected the public mood with the dysthymia
that it has long since been selling.

In the old days, anyone who was afraid of standing before a
crowd and delivering a speech would check in to therapy. He would examine in
his issues and try to work out why he feared public speaking.

The process would probably not produce any notable benefit.
We recall Janet Malcolm’s study of the case of an analyst dubbed “Aaron Green” in
her book The Impossible Profession.

Green had undergone psychoanalysis as part of his
professional training. When he began analysis he was very afraid of speaking in
public. When he finished analysis he was very afraid of speaking in public.

Let’s not call it a great success.

Today, people who are afraid to speak in public will often sign up with a group called Toastmasters. Recently, New York Times
reporter Henry Alford did just that.

At Toastmasters meetings people do not sit around talking
about why they are afraid to speak up in public. They stand up and speak to the
assembled group.

Moreover they do not just learn about the psychological side
of the issue; they learn how to construct an effective speech.

Alford explains correctly that no one can overcome a fear of
public speaking without doing a great deal of public speaking. One suspects,
for example, that teachers conquer their fear of public speaking by doing their job.

The result: Toastmasters did not eliminate all of Alford’s
anxiety, but it helped him get it under control. It taught him how to give an
engaging speech.

Without having further information one does not know how
well the approach would work with people who are suffering from phobias about
public speaking. Nevertheless, Toastmasters is therapeutic in ways that many
forms of therapy are not.

Nearly everyone will, at some point or another, be called
upon to deliver a speech in public. It might not be before an audience of
thousands, but you will surely be called on to present a report to a committee or
to pitch some new business to a prospective client.

Whatever the case, it’s a good to learn how to deliver a
speech.

Like many phobias, fear of public speaking has a rational
basis. It makes sense that people would feel less than comfortable about standing
up in public and exposing themselves to scrutiny. As famed psychologist Aaron
Beck pointed out, most of the situations and objects that provoke intense fear
are dangerous: snakes, spiders, heights and crowds.

A phobia is a rational fear taken to an extreme. Despite
what psychoanalysts used to believe, it is not about nothing.

In any event, Toastmasters should count as a quasi-cognitive-behavioral
treatment for those whose inability to deliver an effective speech has been
inhibiting their career advancement.

Democracy in Egypt was one of the highlights. The administration was so happy that Egypt held a democratic election that it was willing to overlook the fact that the winner belonged to the Muslim Brotherhood. In fact, the first
foreign dignitary to visit with newly elected president Mohamed
Morsi was none other than Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

The administration’s role model for Islamic democracy was
the increasingly repressive regime of Turkey’s Islamist president, Recep Tayyip
Erdogan. In fact, President Erdogan became Obama’s best friend in the Middle East.

How’s it all working out.

Well, two days ago the government of Egypt branded the
Muslim Brotherhood a terrorist organization.

It was
only a couple of years ago that President Obama, struggling for an American
response to the uprisings in Egypt, Libya and Syria, was said to be speaking
with Mr. Erdogan more than the American president was to any world leader, with
the exception of the British prime minister, David Cameron. And it was a source
of pride for Turks: One newspaper at the time hailed the frequent conversations
as a sign of Turkey’s “ascent in the international arena.”

“There
was a honeymoon from 2010 until the summer of 2013,” said Soner Cagaptay, the
director of the Turkish Research Program at the Washington Institute for Near
East Policy. “It was guided by the personal rapport Obama and Erdogan had
established.”

That now
seems a long time ago here. The reality, say analysts, is that the two
countries’ foreign policies have been notably diverging, and that the blowup
over the corruption investigation and the American diplomatic contingent is
being taken as the latest sign of a deepening distrust.

They
are at odds over Egypt, where Turkey had been a strong supporter of the deposed
president, Mohamed Morsi, and where the United States has sought a relationship
with Egypt’s new military rulers.

In
Syria, Turkey has aggressively backed and armed rebel fighters, and felt
betrayed when the United States backed away from military action against the
Syrian government in September. In Iraq, American officials believe the Turks,
by signing oil contracts with the northern Kurdish region that cut out the
central government in Baghdad, are pursuing a policy that could lead to the
country’s breakup.

Naturally, the Obama administration has lost control of the situation.
Foreign policy is not for amateurs.

Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Just in time for Christmas and New Year’s: a column
explaining how to get along with other people. (Via Maggie's Farm)

Whatever the value of the advice, Eric Barker’s first
sentence sets an infelicitous tone: he wants you to learn how “to make people like you.”

Why do you want to
make people feel a certain way toward you? If they come to suspect that you
have been using some clever scientific tools to manipulate their feelings, the
chances are good that they are not going to like you very much at all.

In truth, the best way to elicit positive feelings in
another person is to show positive feelings toward that person. Extending a
hand of friendship is better than trying to seduce people into doing something that
they might not want to do. Remember the old line: do unto others as you would
have others do unto you.

I would venture that you would rather not have your mind
manipulated by other people.

These caveats having been stated, let’s examine some of the
recommendations that Barker has gleaned from contemporary psychology.

First on the list: encourage other people to talk about
themselves.

One finds it hard to disagree with this tidbit of wisdom. I would add that when someone is talking about himself, you must show interest. If you
look bored you will give the impression that the other person is not
sufficiently entertaining.

Whatever your new acquaintance is talking about, you want him to feel like he has all your attention.

I would add, politely, that if you ask another person to
talk about himself you had best be ready to reciprocate. If you ask too many
questions you will end up sounding like an inquisitor. It’s no way to make
friends and influence people.

If the other person spends most of your conversation talking
about himself, he might eventually feel that he has been performing for an
audience of one. It’s no way to make friends and influence people.

I quote Barker’s next suggestion:

If you
use questions to guide people toward the errors in their thinking process and
allow them to come up with the solution themselves, they're less likely to feel
threatened and more likely to follow through.

What makes you think that someone will like you if you are trying
to correct the errors in their thinking? And what makes you think that you are
right and they are wrong? Who do you think you are? A schoolmarm?

The master of this technique was, of course, Socrates. We
know how that worked out.

I don’t want to sound too contrary, but when trying to
connect with another human being it is better to establish areas where you
agree, not ways to correct the other person’s errors.

The third suggestion is this: ask for advice.

Wharton professor Adam Grant explained:

Asking
for advice encouraged greater cooperation and information sharing, turning a
potentially contentious negotiation into a win-win deal. Studies demonstrate
that across the manufacturing, financial services, insurance and
pharmaceuticals industries, seeking advice is among the most effective ways to
influence peers, superiors, and subordinates.

Ironically, asking for advice is not the same as
helping another person to see the error of his ways. Thus, this suggestion
contradicts the previous one, but, why quibble.

When you ask for advice you are showing respect for the
other person. You are also humbling yourself in front of him. And you are
showing yourself willing to engage in a cooperative enterprise.

All told, it’s good to ask for advice. It’s even better when
you take it.

Most people find it very difficult to take advice. It is an
acquired skill, one that you should have mastered before you ask for advice.
Otherwise, your interlocutor will think that you are just going through the
motions of asking for advice because someone told you that it was a good
conversational ploy.

Barker’s version of the fourth suggestion goes like this:

Ask
them about something positive in their life. Only after they reply should you
ask them how they're feeling about life in general.

For my taste this all sounds inquisitorial. You should think
of what you can offer, not what you can extract. If you offer something
positive about your life, your new friend is likely, according to the law of
reciprocity, to do the same.

If someone walks up to you at a cocktail party and asks you
to say something positive about your life, you are likely to feel put upon. If he
asks you how you are feeling about life in general, you are also likely to feel
put upon. Besides, isn't it slightly idiotic to ask someone how he feels about life in general?

This line of question, which Barker calls a two-step, feels
intrusive and invasive.

You should be connecting with the other person, not manipulating
him.

Next, Barker suggests that you repeat the last three words
of your interlocutor’s sentences.

Apparently, this works well in hostage negotiations.

Yet, the minute your interlocutor figures out what you
are doing he risks being grievously insulted. Sounding like someone’s echo chamber
might massage his narcissism, but it is no substitute for the ability to find
points where the two of you agree.

Finding common ground is far more productive than trying to
manipulate someone’s feelings.

The last suggestion is to gossip, but positively:

So, say
positive and pleasant things about friends and colleagues, and you are seen as
a nice person. In contrast, constantly complain about their failings, and
people will unconsciously apply the negative traits and incompetence to you.

Obviously, it’s better to be positive than to whine. It’s
better to see the good in people than to obsess about their faults, foibles and
flaws.

If you like the way one person is dressed and do not like
the way another person is dressed, focus first on the first more than the second.

Of course, commentaries about your surroundings, the weather and the Super Bowl are not
gossip.

But, keep in mind, it is not a good thing to present
yourself as a gossip. If you reveal too much information, positive or negative,
about your friends and colleagues you are announcing to your new acquaintance
that you cannot keep secrets. That tells him that you are indiscreet and borderline disloyal. No one wants a friend who is indiscreet and disloyal.

Several weeks ago the academics who belong to the American
Studies Association (ASA) voted to boycott Israeli universities.

It was an appalling action, well worthy of the label of
anti-Semitic.

And yet, some good has come out of it. The ASA has been
marginalized and shunned by many universities, some of which have withdrawn
from the ASA. More importantly, the Association of American Universities has
issued a strong denunciation of the ASA (via Legal Insurrection blog):

The
Executive Committee of the Association of American Universities strongly
opposes a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. Three U.S. scholarly
organizations have now expressed support for such a boycott. Any such boycott
of academic institutions directly violates academic freedom, which is a
fundamental principle of AAU universities and of American higher education in
general.

Academic
freedom is the freedom of university faculty responsibly to produce and
disseminate knowledge through research, teaching, and service, without undue
constraint. It is a principle that should not be abridged by political
considerations. American colleges and universities, as well as like
institutions elsewhere, must stand as the first line of defense against attacks
on academic freedom.

Efforts
to address political issues, or to address restrictions on academic freedom,
should not themselves infringe upon academic freedom. Restrictions imposed on
the ability of scholars of any particular country to work with their fellow
academics in other countries, participate in meetings and organizations, or
otherwise carry out their scholarly activities violate academic freedom. The
boycott of Israeli academic institutions therefore clearly violates the
academic freedom not only of Israeli scholars but also of American scholars who
might be pressured to comply with it. We urge American scholars and scholars
around the world who believe in academic freedom to oppose this and other such
academic boycotts.

With the third anniversary of the Arab Spring fast
approaching, The Economist takes a cold look at what it has really
accomplished.

We all remember those heady days, when Timesmen Tom Friedman
and Nick Kristof were camped out in Tahrir Square breathing the air of the
oncoming democracy.

We remember those who saw the Arab Spring as the apotheosis
of the Bush administration’s freedom agenda.

But, we all knew that the crack Obama/Clinton foreign policy
team was managing the crisis. What could go wrong? Or, should I
say: what could go right?

The Economist offers a sobering assessment:

Yet the
fact is that three years after a despairing Tunisian barrow boy named Muhammad
Bouazizi (pictured in the poster above) set himself on fire, kindling a
region-wide sequence of revolts that some dubbed the Arab spring, a sense of
deep disappointment has settled on the Middle East. It is not hard to see why.

What
those popular uprisings demanded was an end to despotism, an end to humiliation
at the hands of the powerful, and a better lot for everyone.

But the
turmoil has brought few tangible rewards. Aside from such momentary thrills as
watching dictators tumble, and marching shoulder to brotherly shoulder with
one’s fellows, bellowing insults in a fleeting chorus of unified purpose, it
has mostly brought trouble. "Revolution?" snorts a barber in Cairo.
"It was a revolution against the people."

In the
countries shaken directly by revolts—Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain, Libya and
Syria—living standards have uniformly fallen. In some cases—particularly for
the poorest and most disadvantaged, they have fallen precipitously. Mr
Bouazizi’s hometown, Sidi Bouzid, where unemployment pushed 25% before the
unrest, suffers an even higher rate now, and joblessness has surged in other
countries, too. Nowhere have the stark divides between classes that underpinned
political resentment, and which fueled not only revolution but religious
extremism and violence, been addressed meaningfully.

And how could we overlook what has been happening in Syria:

And
this is not to mention the cost in blood of the Arab revolts, let alone the
utter calamity that has befallen Syria’s 23m people, and increasingly many of
their neighbours. Not only have at least 130,000 Syrians perished, and as many
as 11m been forced to flee their homes. There is no end in sight to their
misery. The concatenation of factors feeding into the Syrian morass, from
meddling foreign powers to sectarian and class schisms, have created a perfect
storm that may only be tamed by consuming itself.

Of course, there was also Benghazi, but it looks as though
the Obama administration is going to succeed in making it go away.

By now, everyone is doing his best to forget the Arab
Spring. It’s a good reason to keep it in mind.

Monday, December 23, 2013

Remember behavioral economics, a branch of neuroscience, the
latest and greatest contribution to human knowledge.

If behavioral economists can persuade you, as they have
persuaded themselves, that human beings do not have free will and often make irrational
decisions, you would be forced to conclude that most people do not know what is
good for them. You might think that people are acting on their own rational self-interest
but they are really being manipulated by brain chemistry.

If so, people need a master, preferably working for the
government, who will force—I mean, nudge—them toward a good that they will
eventually recognizes to be the best for them.

Put all of that in a pot, stir often and you come up with
Obamacare. Of course, it is one giant leap toward socializing the insurance
market, but its proponents presented it as grounded in scientific fact.

That’s why the remaining few who defend the program insist
that once you learn what you get you will not mind losing your insurance and
your doctor.

Now, famed Stanford
neuroscientist Robert Sapolsky offers an opinion on another important matter. He tells us that human males are “pathetic” and “ludicrous.”

I will vigorously defend Sapolsky’s right to an opinion. I
would even defend his right to indulge in self-flagellation and call himself
pathetic and ludicrous.

And yet, for Sapolsky to offer his opinions as though they
were science takes it too far. People who pretend that their ideological
prejudices are scientific fact are manipulative. By the way, why isn’t it
bigotry to call men pathetic and ludicrous?

Anyway, Sapolsky is intrigued by a phenomenon that he
apparently does not understand: College bowl games.

It seems that his neuroscience knows nothing about group
pride gained through competition.

Sapolsky doesn’t get bowl games. It’s his constitutionally
protected right. I assume that he doesn’t get the Super Bowl and doesn’t get
warfare or economic competition, either.

Apparently, his pacifist soul dreams of a world filled with
peace and harmony, beyond conflict and beyond winners and losers.

Again, Sapolsky has the right, based on his delicate and
guilt-ridden sensibility not to understand
manliness. Let’s not call his opinion science.

Thus, he is somewhat perplexed by the latest from neuroscience:

When
women are present or when men are prompted to think about women, they act
differently, research shows. Well, duh. But in unexpected ways. A 2008 study in
the journal Evolutionary Psychology showed that in the mere presence of women
as witnesses, men become more likely to jaywalk and to wait until the last
second to dash on to a bus. This reflects, no doubt, the well-known belief
among men that jaywalking means you're a Roman gladiator of irrepressible
virility. As I said, pathetic.

Judgmental, don’t you think?

Why should any of these behaviors be “unexpected.” Men like
to show off to impress women. Who knew? Men like to draw women’s attention to
themselves by performing feats of derring do. Amazing! In particular, single
men, the ones who are looking to mate, take more risks and behave more aggressively
in order to show women that they can compete in the arena. OMG.

You have to stand in awe of modern neuroscience.

It makes good sense. A man who shows off in front of a woman
is auditioning for the role of protector. Apparently, the impulse to protect
women is hardwired into the male of the human species.

Nothing about it should surprise anyone. It is perfectly
consistent with the science of evolutionary psychology… which, Sapolsky acknowledges.

Yet, Sapolsky places ideology ahead of science and decides that
men need to be ridiculed. Again, that is not science.

As an interesting sidelight, Sapolsky adds that the same
effect is not present in women:

By
contrast, these studies uniformly report that cues about males have no such
effects on women.

Surely, this suggests that the difference between the sexes
that is hard-wired. Sheryl Sandberg notwithstanding women do not compete for
men by showing off their prowess in risk-taking behaviors.

I am not sure that we needed science to tell us that either,
but surely it is worth more than the passing glance that Sapolsky gives it.

Bu then there is this. It turns out that the male impulse to
show off in front of women extends to the realm of generosity, to charitable
giving:

But now
comes research carried out by Mark van Vugt and Wendy Iredale and reported last
year in the British Journal of Psychology. In the presence of women (but not
other men), men became more generous in an economic game: They made more
contributions to public goods and volunteered more time for charitable causes.
In fact, the size of their charitable contributions increased in the presence
of women they rated as more attractive.

Potlatch, anyone?

Science has now shown that men are not merely programmed to
compete in the arena. They show off for women in other areas. It seems that they are also programmed to provide for their families. When
they succeed in accumulating money or profit, their impulse is not to spend it
on themselves, but on their families or on the neediest. I am not sure why this
is news either.

As a fundamental moral principle, generosity or magnanimity
goes back to Confucius and Aristotle.

The philosophers were inclined to see it as a moral duty.
Now we know that men seem to be hardwired to perform benevolent actions.
Happily for them, duty and instinct coincide.

Examining the information gleaned from the latest studies,
Sapolsky draws a rather strange conclusion:

The
allure of the opposite sex makes men more violent, but only, it seems, in
circumstances where violence is rewarded with higher status. When status can be
achieved in a more socially desirable way, things work differently. In short,
with the right social arrangements, this ludicrous tendency of men can be
harnessed not only to encourage a ferocious goal-line stand but to make the
world a kinder place.

This paragraph is also not science. Sapolsky is making a
value judgment. He does it first by choosing the word “violent.” Were we to
examine his first examples, quoted above, we see that male risk-taking involves
jaywalking and running to catch a bus. Why are these signs of a violent
disposition?

Men are more competitive, they take more risks when they are
trying to impress comely women. It is true that men engage aggressive behavior
in order to compete for status, but calling it “violent” puts a negative connotation on it.

If human males, like other primates, compete for position on
a status hierarchy, this must count as a scientific fact. Wearing his scientist
hat Sapolsky has no business pronouncing it “ludicrous.”

Would any scientist say that it is ludicrous that the earth
revolves around the sun?

Apparently, Sapolsky dreams of a world where “status can be
achieved in a more socially desirable way.” One would like to know who is going
to decide what is and is not socially desirable, but we would all agree that college
football is more desirable than war. And didn’t William James already suggest
that economic competition is “the moral equivalent of war?”

One does not know which kind of social arrangements Sapolsky
would favor, but he ought to know, as we all know, that people who renounce
aggressive behavior are more than likely to become victimized by those who have
not.

If the male impulse to compete aggressively is hardwired
into the organism, what makes anyone think that one person’s renunciation of
violence or forced replacement of aggressive competition with charitable giving
is going to be reciprocated by those who are waiting for just the right moment
to take what you have?

Isn’t Sapolsky saying that the nation would be better if
people worked and competed less and if the government engaged itself in a grand
scheme to redistribute income?

He is certainly entitled to his opinion, but let’s not call
it science.